The lives and work of important American artists and arts communities are well documented in the Collection, especially at pointsof intersection between twentieth-century literature and the visual arts. The papers of painter and arts educator Robert Henri document the experiences of the Ashcan painters, artists whose work depicted American culture and life in the modern city; the Katherine Dreier Papers record the history of her Société Anonyme and the artists she championed, particularly Marcel Duchamp, as well as Man Ray, El Lissitzky, and Max Ernst. Activities around Alfred Stieglitz’s important photography and art galleries, 291 and An American Place, and his influential publication Camera Work, as well as conversations and exchanges among artists and writers in the Southwest are documented in the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive; the archive includes work, correspondence, and writings by artists Anne Brigman, Marsden Hartley, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, and others. More recently, Saul Steinberg willed his papers to Yale, along with hundreds of drawings and sketchbooks, and the archive also includes a selection of colored pencils, his customary tools. Photographer Eve Arnold’s archive, including detailed notebooks describing her work process, are another important recent addition to the Collection. Works by Picasso and Matisse; paintings by Marsden Hartley; photographs by Edward Steichen, James Van Der Zee, and Carl Van Vechten; caricatures by Miguel Covarrubias; sculpture by Augusta Savage and Isamu Noguchi; and prints by Romare Bearden suggest the range of artworks in the Collection.
Image: Georgia O’Keeffe, Pink Roses
Collection Highlights Exhibited in Multitudes: A Celebration of the Yale Collection of American Literature: Materials from the Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O’Keeffe Archive, including correspondence between and photographs of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, “Lower Manhattan” by Alfred Stieglitz, undated, and “The House I Live In” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1937. Artists & Letters–Checklist & Object Descriptions
